


the view from space

by luridsea



Category: Voltron - Fandom, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Pining Keith (Voltron), Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-09 04:15:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12268695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luridsea/pseuds/luridsea
Summary: the evolution of keith and lance's relationship over the course of their time together.





	the view from space

**Author's Note:**

> i'm a pretty anxious person, so posting this is making me a bit nervous. i don't have a planned-out timeline yet or anything, so i don't know how often updates will be, but i decided i'm going to try :) i wanted to write something that was as close to what we canonically have as possible, so i've tried to do my research. if i've made any mistakes (of any kind), let me know! i appreciate constructive criticism. at any rate, i hope you enjoy!

In the desert, the stars were always bright. Keith used to watch them from his shack, back flat against the bumpy, corrugated metal of the roof. Orion, the Big Dipper. Ursa Major. The same stars that the Romans had watched, or the Egyptians, or the Neanderthals. Civilizations throughout the ages giving them names and shapes and stories.

He was always alone, those days, but the stars were comforting. They were the only constant in his life that he didn’t mind. So far away, so unaccessible. Even if you had a spaceship, which he didn’t, they were too distant. The furthest anyone had ever gotten from Earth was Kerberos, and he didn’t like to think about Kerberos anymore. So he limited his interaction with the stars to simply observing, and dedicated himself to the daily monotony of a search that had once seemed so pressing, so crucial. The carvings. The lion, whatever it was or had once been.

What would he do with it, once he found it? He didn’t even know what it was. A statue? Maybe he would finally uncover it and all that remained would be the skeleton of some ancient, crumbling beast. It had given him a purpose for the past few months, and now he felt lost again. It remained out of his grasp, tantalizingly hidden away in the desert bluffs. 

But it was the only thing he had left to cling to, even if it seemed impossible, and he would continue the search. There was no more Garrison for him, no more dreams of space travel and the far-flung galaxies that spiraled around their tiny little planet. He didn’t even have Shiro; the closest thing he had ever had to family. Shiro was gone and Keith’s chances of flying somewhere far away were gone with him. 

It was a small, hopeless existence, but it was his, so he stuck to his maps and pictures and hastily-scribbled notes. He watched the stars and gave the Garrison a wide berth and slept fully clothed, just in case. In case of what, he didn’t know, but it made him feel as though all of it was a little more temporary; as though at the drop of a hat, he might get up and leave, carving out a new home somewhere else. 

And after month after month of the same routine, he had almost given up hope that anything could change-- until a pod lit up the night sky as it crash landed in the desert near the Garrison.

Keith had been watching, waiting for it on the roof, hoping beyond hope that the carvings on the canyon walls were accurate. They predicted something-- an arrival, something falling from the sky. There was even a date, against all odds. And since he had no other leads, he latched onto the idea with trademark stubbornness. 

When he was little, he’d always loved conspiracies, the idea that there was something else out there. In the woods or the deserts or even other galaxies. To this day, Keith wasn’t quite sure if he had really believed those stories or if they had just given him something to think about. A suspension of disbelief. But in comparison to some of the things he used to read about, the carvings didn’t seem like that far of a reach. They were tangible, something he could touch and take photos of and pin to his ever-expanding corkboard. He knew that it looked like the work of someone who was out of their mind, but there was no one else to see it anyway. Plus, he felt a little out of his mind.

And the night that the pod fell to earth, he was ready, eyes fixed on the stars, hoverbike parked just below him, nerves humming with anticipation. The second it showed up, he swung into action.

The explosive charges were easy enough. He had been pilfering Garrison tech and tinkering on his own for long enough to have the proper materials by now. Nothing Keith made was very pretty, but it would function, which was what mattered. After all, he was a pilot, not an engineer. 

Naturally, anything falling out of the sky would be of interest to the Garrison, so he had prepped the charges and checked the strap on his knife and tied a bandana around the lower half of his face. Just in case. The bandana was mainly because of the dust kicked up by his hoverbike, but it served a double purpose in covering some of his features. Better than nothing. It wasn’t really a plan, per se, but he had a general idea of what to do. Blow things up, explore, and leave before reinforcement arrived. Hopefully with whatever important thing the carvings had prophesied.

The plan worked just fine for the first hour or so. It took some twenty minutes for Keith to maneuver his way to the crash site, and then it turned into a waiting game. He parked the bike several hundred yards away from the site, behind a large boulder, and watched the activity unfold. The Garrison had beaten him there, and he listened to the vehicles roar in while people in biohazard suits inched closer and closer to the pod. Other people trained guns on it, immobile and intimidating. After a bit, someone must have given the go-ahead, because they began to set up structures and adjust floodlights. Keith waited until things seemed quiet enough and then began to move.

Setting the charges was easy. He looped around and managed to get in and out with no trouble at all. Then, it was a simple matter of pressing the buttons.

After that, it had seemed so straightforward to slip into the newly-erected investigation complex when most of the personnel had immediately moved out to check on the damage. Five minutes and three downed Garrison officers later, he was lifting a dazed Shiro from some kind of medical examining table and trying to process the shock of seeing a face he had given up for good.

Until someone else walked through the door, someone clearly not dressed in the uniform of a Garrison officer, and picked up Shiro’s other arm. “Nope, No, you-- No, no, no. No, you don’t. I’m saving Shiro.”

Keith was completely taken aback. “Who are you?” It would be smartest to just knock him out and get away from here. The guy couldn’t be any older than Keith himself, and he acted like there was nothing unusual about waltzing into an obviously alien ship in the middle of the night, ready for heroics.

“Who am I? Uh, the name’s Lance?” He stared at Keith accusingly as if the name was supposed to ring some kind of bell. “...We were in the same class at the Garrison?”

“Really? Are you an engineer?” Maybe his face did look a little familiar. 

“No, I’m a pilot! We were, like, rivals. You know, Lance and Keith, neck and neck?” Lance waited impatiently for a burst of recognition. This guy was delusional. Keith had never been rivals with anyone. He hadn’t even had any friends, except for Shiro, and Shiro was seven years his senior so they didn’t often get to see each other around the Garrison. Regardless, Keith would have remembered if someone as frustratingly effusive as Lance had been in his classes. Except--

“Oh wait, I remember you. You’re a cargo pilot.” Not quite the same, then. That explained it. What was a cargo pilot doing in the middle of the desert, when the students should have been securely in their dorms? If Keith hadn’t been expelled, he might have been there with them, he thought bitterly, or maybe even with his own ship by now, exploring the solar system and beyond. 

Lance somehow managed to look equal parts offended and smug. “Well, not anymore. I’m fighter class now, thanks to you washing out.”

“Congratulations.” Keith didn’t have time for this. They had to get out of here. Unfortunately, Lance came with him, and suddenly there were two more kids from the Garrison, and they were all escaping on his cruiser, and without quite realizing it, they had become a team.

**Author's Note:**

> that's that! i'm busy with school, so we'll see about how often i update this, but let me know if it was any good and i'll really try to make another chapter of this (i'm thinking this sets the baseline and then i'll skip around more in the storyline/make things up/etc.). thanks for reading!


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